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Tuesday, May 8, 2018

Germany plans database to tackle rising anti-Semitism

The German government plans to establish a new national database to register anti-Semitic crimes and incidents, amid rising concern over the safety of the Jewish community in the country.

Felix Klein, the government’s new anti-Semitism commissioner, said current criminal statistics did not capture the full extent of the problem, in part because they ignored verbal abuse and other incidents that fell short of criminal behaviour.

He also voiced doubt about whether the existing database accurately identified the background of many perpetrators.

“It shows that more than 90 per cent of all anti-Semitic crimes are committed by rightwing extremists. The victims, Jews living in Germany, tell us something completely different: they feel that Muslim-motivated anti-Semitism is much more dangerous than appears in the statistics,” Mr Klein told journalists late last week.

He also suggested a change to the German criminal code that would toughen penalties for physical assaults if the attack was motivated by racial, religious or ethnic hatred.